Chris Lewis,

while there's much I could criticise academia for, I think you're here displaying rank bias yourself and making unjustified innuendos based on one anonymous academic and one high-profile academic cum journalist/public intellectual. And in the latter's case, he's been between left and right throughout his career and in my opinion, apart from his humanitarian bias, sits just as centre as all the rest. There's no political air outside the popular centre in this country.
In answer to your question, "Does Manne really have to insult the Australian electorate by challenging Labor not to "scramble to win back some of the "centre ground" of politics by imitating the populist conservative attitudes and policies of the Howard era?", I'd say yes! It may be an insult but it's also bloody true!
And while you defend the coalition's record on immigration, Manne is talking about refugees and not immigrants brought in to keep the economy humming.
The fact is that the litany of sins you assign to Manne amount to progressive ideology and Labor is the only major party with a true belief in them. The only reason the conservatives are grudgingly in the same spectrum is because of the phenomena of the centre that keeps Australia in a left/right stalemate. If Abbott was really free, to exercise his and his Party's real agenda, there'd be an abrupt shift to the right in terms of economy, morality and nationalism.
You're beginning to sound like you ought to join the party!
To condemn academia in general because of one individual who dares to speak out--and who ought to be congratulated for it!--is despicable.
I've been working in academia for several years too and you know as well as I do that like any institution there's a good mix of left and right thinking people. It's absolute nonsense to say Australia's universities are left-wing; they're quite the opposite. And those who do have a left bias are not left enough! and remain in the dreary centre.

Squeers, i never said they were "all" leftwing, just most. i refer to my experience which probably did result from myself never accepting the sanctity of their opinion, and being willing to expose my thoughts to a whole lot of knowledge frowned upon by scholars i knew well.

Sure I got 100% distinctions and high distinctions from working hard, but i never respected my need to write in a way which most would agree to, although there was the odd academic capable of challenge. When i heard wrong generalisations like the working class alone was resposible for multiculturalism, i challenged them with reason. They would back down.

As for your claim of progressive ideology with "Labor ... the only major party with a true belief in them", that is a simplistic assertion that does not recongise all of the impulses evident in a liberal democracy. It also does not recongise the many social achievments by the coaliton over the years.

To suggest that budgetary responsibility, security considerations and so on are not aso important (progressive), is another example of what I am talking about.

As with the carbon tax debate, there are two sides to every story. Some may claim it is progressive. I will argue that it is flawed and merely serves to perpetuate a myth that is is Labor that is progressive.

Chris Lewis,
I also excelled academically--and generally provoked and argued against consensus views. While undergraduates are obliged to follow formulaic assessment conventions if they want to do well, they are not obliged to follow a political line. There is such a thing as political correctness that all Australians are obliged to pay lip-service to, but there's no political censorship or left-wing grooming of undergraduates underway. If anything the institution is conservative and driven by the bottom line more than anything else.
The fact is that Australian society is by and large conservative, intolerant and bigoted--provincial in a word--and it's this that makes university "look" left-wing. When students enrol at university it's often a shock to their sensibilities to be confronted with a depth of intellectualism they didn't know existed. Some prosper, finding it stimulating, and their mind's expand, others retreat into their respective provincialisms, the values they were weaned on, and refuse to think beyond their biases. I've encountered this many times, where people just shut up shop intellectually. In any event, these days probably most are just after a ticket, rather than "learning".
I don't think you'll find too many more radical thinkers than me and I was always challenging orthodoxy, including left orthodoxies, as an undergraduate. I was only once marked unfairly, imo, and that was by a Conservative Catholic history professor.
For the last few years I've been teaching and marking and I routinely read arguments I disagree with, but I can honestly say I've never marked a student down for their argument, only if they fail to substantiate it, or based on other criteria.
The "achievements" of the coalition you allude to were driven by the tension between left and right that holds all parties in the centre. Similarly Labor is prevented from its latent polical bias towards redistribution. If the Libs had their way unimpeded they would cut public spending to the bone and serve the market and its masters esclusively.
The real tension in democratic capitalism (a contradiction in terms) is between economic policy, and the libertarians are winning that battle!

A few points

I don't know much about Robert Manne's work as an academic but as a social commentators he is of no use and should have been ignored long ago. His consistant reaction to any de-regulation or turn in the market is to insist that the end is nigh and capitalism is dead, only for the markets to soldier on regardless..

As for his comments on refugees: Boat people account for 5,000 of the 180,000 (about) a year immigrant intake.. or did last year. Of that 180,000 I believe about 16,000 or so are classified as refugees.. that count includes the boat people..

So despite Mann's general cluelessness as a commentatator he's not proposing anything really radical, but then he might not have looked at the immigration figures. These remain historically very high in relation to total population...

Squeers, I may be wrong, but i dont accept your tone about comments about the Australian electorate. I think we Australians have done a pretty good job in recent decades, although i too have suggested some problematic trends in recent decades.

I will make some kind of response in a coming piece about what is progressive in this imperfect and competitive world, although it may be a while before i finish and Graham accepts it.

"Many Australian academics believe that only those who agree with them are unbiased."

Basically it all boils down to us or them. Our own life experiences set us up to be biased.